The prime minister’s three-day official visit to the United States this week started with rather queer optics. First, the delegation included the army chief and the director general of the ISI. Second, the arrest for the umpteenth time of the chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed, alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. And third, the odd reception accorded to Imran Khan on arrival at Washington’s Dulles International Airport.
The unprecedented inclusion of the army chief and DG ISI in an official delegation of the chief executive of the country for a meeting with the US president has sent the wrong signals. Imran may well have wanted to send the ‘same page’ signal to audiences within the country and abroad. Yet it gave the message of a pathetically weak civilian government. That the military and the civilian arms of the state have often worked at cross purposes in some critical areas - like national security, nuclear policy and relations with India and Afghanistan - is an undeniable reality. The composition of the delegation has only reinforced this perception, as well as the view that the ties between Pakistan and the United States are primarily military-to-military and transactional in nature, instead of strategic or wide ranging.
The ‘arrest’ of Hafiz Saeed was clearly designed to signal to the US that Pakistan under Imran Khan was serious in tackling militancy on the one hand, and mending fences with India on the other. Whosoever deluded himself into believing that Hafiz Saeed’s arrest will impress policymakers in the US has been no less than a fool.
Initially Trump seemed to believe that Saeed’s arrest was indeed a great victory of his administration. A euphoric Trump tweeted, “After a ten-year search, the so-called “mastermind” of the Mumbai Terror attacks has been arrested in Pakistan. Great pressure has been exerted over the last two years to find him!”
But the euphoria was short lived. Quickly the US president was reminded how naive he was in assuming that Pakistan had indeed located Hafiz Saeed from Tora Bora caves after a decade of search and great pressure exerted by the US.
Trump was also reminded that Hafiz Saeed gets arrested whenever the issue comes up before the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) or when international pressure against him mounts. That, after every temporary arrest, he is quickly released. Someone on Twitter wrote, “Anyone believing that Hafiz Saeed was arrested after a massive manhunt is a great fool. He (Hafiz Saeed) has always been there in full public view, even holding public meetings and taking part in elections. So called arrest on eve of Imran’s US visit is to make even a greater fool of a fool.”
The US House Foreign Affairs Committee reminded Trump: “FYI Pakistan wasn’t searching for him for 10 years. He has been living freely, and was arrested and released in December 2001, May 2002, October 2002, August 2006 (twice), December 2008, September 2009 and January 2017. Let’s hold the applause until he is convicted.”
President Trump must have been fuming on learning the reality behind the drama of Hafiz Saeed’s arrest.
Other moves on eve of the visit were also no less puerile. A minister had re-tweeted a New Yorker article critical of Trump titled: A Racist in the White House. Hitting at the US president, it noted that racism and bigotry had become acceptable political norms in democracies. Just ahead of the visit the minister promptly deleted the tweet.
On the other hand, 10 US Congressmen wrote to Trump on July 19, asking him to be tough on PM Imran Khan during talks on Monday. They asked Trump to raise the issue of state kidnappings and killings in Sindh and Balochistan as well as forced conversions of Hindu and Christian girls to Islam. Some members of the European Parliament also reportedly wrote to the US President to take up with Imran the deteriorating human rights situation in Balochistan.
So when the Qatar Airways aircraft carrying Imran Khan landed at the Dulles International Airport, there was no customary protocol accorded to visiting foreign heads of government. Instead Imran Khan was received and greeted by a Foreign Office desk officer inside a public transportation vehicle.
The hard core issues that Imran was confronted with include persuading the US to mediate on Kashmir with India, restoring the suspended US military aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars, removing Pakistan from an FATF grey list potentially costing the country billions of dollars, and removal from a US watch list for failing to protect religious minorities.
No less important from Pakistan’s point of view must be how to resist getting sucked deeper in the Saudi-US-Israeli alliance against Iran. Given the reports that the visit was arranged by Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, the decision to station US troops in Saudi Arabia and the gradual tightening of the noose around Iran, it would be naive to assume that the issue would not come up for discussion. Further isolation of Iran must have been on the US agenda next only to the uneventful withdrawal of US troops and fighting the militants posing threat to the US and other countries in the region. Trump’s bid to win the next election is predicated on successfully bringing back US troops from Afghanistan and taming Iran.
President Trump’s offer of mediation on Kashmir in the joint press conference in reply to a pointed, if not planted, question by a Pakistani journalist was neither here nor there. No sooner did the US president finish his talk, the Indian External Affairs Ministry rebutted it saying that outstanding issues with Pakistan are discussed only bilaterally.
The real talking may have been between COAS Qamar Bajwa and US military officials, leaving Imran to concentrate on his public jalsa and lambast the opposition back home. What transpired in the mil-to-mil talks is not known yet. But the greatest dilemma for Imran Khan is this: while President Trump, empowered to overrule the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA, can deliver on the promises he may make, Imran Khan has no such luxury, the mantra of ‘one page’ notwithstanding.
The writer is a former member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
The unprecedented inclusion of the army chief and DG ISI in an official delegation of the chief executive of the country for a meeting with the US president has sent the wrong signals. Imran may well have wanted to send the ‘same page’ signal to audiences within the country and abroad. Yet it gave the message of a pathetically weak civilian government. That the military and the civilian arms of the state have often worked at cross purposes in some critical areas - like national security, nuclear policy and relations with India and Afghanistan - is an undeniable reality. The composition of the delegation has only reinforced this perception, as well as the view that the ties between Pakistan and the United States are primarily military-to-military and transactional in nature, instead of strategic or wide ranging.
The ‘arrest’ of Hafiz Saeed was clearly designed to signal to the US that Pakistan under Imran Khan was serious in tackling militancy on the one hand, and mending fences with India on the other. Whosoever deluded himself into believing that Hafiz Saeed’s arrest will impress policymakers in the US has been no less than a fool.
10 US Congressmen wrote to Trump on July 19, asking him to be tough on PM Imran Khan during talks. They asked Trump to raise the issue of state kidnappings and killings in Sindh and Balochistan as well as forced conversions of Hindu and Christian girls to Islam
Initially Trump seemed to believe that Saeed’s arrest was indeed a great victory of his administration. A euphoric Trump tweeted, “After a ten-year search, the so-called “mastermind” of the Mumbai Terror attacks has been arrested in Pakistan. Great pressure has been exerted over the last two years to find him!”
But the euphoria was short lived. Quickly the US president was reminded how naive he was in assuming that Pakistan had indeed located Hafiz Saeed from Tora Bora caves after a decade of search and great pressure exerted by the US.
Trump was also reminded that Hafiz Saeed gets arrested whenever the issue comes up before the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) or when international pressure against him mounts. That, after every temporary arrest, he is quickly released. Someone on Twitter wrote, “Anyone believing that Hafiz Saeed was arrested after a massive manhunt is a great fool. He (Hafiz Saeed) has always been there in full public view, even holding public meetings and taking part in elections. So called arrest on eve of Imran’s US visit is to make even a greater fool of a fool.”
The US House Foreign Affairs Committee reminded Trump: “FYI Pakistan wasn’t searching for him for 10 years. He has been living freely, and was arrested and released in December 2001, May 2002, October 2002, August 2006 (twice), December 2008, September 2009 and January 2017. Let’s hold the applause until he is convicted.”
President Trump must have been fuming on learning the reality behind the drama of Hafiz Saeed’s arrest.
Other moves on eve of the visit were also no less puerile. A minister had re-tweeted a New Yorker article critical of Trump titled: A Racist in the White House. Hitting at the US president, it noted that racism and bigotry had become acceptable political norms in democracies. Just ahead of the visit the minister promptly deleted the tweet.
On the other hand, 10 US Congressmen wrote to Trump on July 19, asking him to be tough on PM Imran Khan during talks on Monday. They asked Trump to raise the issue of state kidnappings and killings in Sindh and Balochistan as well as forced conversions of Hindu and Christian girls to Islam. Some members of the European Parliament also reportedly wrote to the US President to take up with Imran the deteriorating human rights situation in Balochistan.
So when the Qatar Airways aircraft carrying Imran Khan landed at the Dulles International Airport, there was no customary protocol accorded to visiting foreign heads of government. Instead Imran Khan was received and greeted by a Foreign Office desk officer inside a public transportation vehicle.
The hard core issues that Imran was confronted with include persuading the US to mediate on Kashmir with India, restoring the suspended US military aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars, removing Pakistan from an FATF grey list potentially costing the country billions of dollars, and removal from a US watch list for failing to protect religious minorities.
No less important from Pakistan’s point of view must be how to resist getting sucked deeper in the Saudi-US-Israeli alliance against Iran. Given the reports that the visit was arranged by Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, the decision to station US troops in Saudi Arabia and the gradual tightening of the noose around Iran, it would be naive to assume that the issue would not come up for discussion. Further isolation of Iran must have been on the US agenda next only to the uneventful withdrawal of US troops and fighting the militants posing threat to the US and other countries in the region. Trump’s bid to win the next election is predicated on successfully bringing back US troops from Afghanistan and taming Iran.
President Trump’s offer of mediation on Kashmir in the joint press conference in reply to a pointed, if not planted, question by a Pakistani journalist was neither here nor there. No sooner did the US president finish his talk, the Indian External Affairs Ministry rebutted it saying that outstanding issues with Pakistan are discussed only bilaterally.
The real talking may have been between COAS Qamar Bajwa and US military officials, leaving Imran to concentrate on his public jalsa and lambast the opposition back home. What transpired in the mil-to-mil talks is not known yet. But the greatest dilemma for Imran Khan is this: while President Trump, empowered to overrule the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA, can deliver on the promises he may make, Imran Khan has no such luxury, the mantra of ‘one page’ notwithstanding.
The writer is a former member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee